Conceding that the issue had become too divisive, the Faculty Senate decided to drop its attempts to form a policy about departmental electorates at its Oct. 9 meeting.

Faculty Senate President Brigitte Roussel said “underlying reasons” had led last year’s senate to start looking at departmental governance and that its response of trying to develop a policy on who could vote in departmental governance issues had been too narrow.

“The electorate (issue) keeps dividing us and it’s not behind what we need to resolve,” she said.

Last year’s president, Sen. Christopher Brooks, said the senate’s response last year had been an attempt at developing a “universal bandage” to deal with complaints about a few academic units.

Neither offered specifics about those issues, but both indicated that the new vice president for academic affairs and research Gary Miller should be given the opportunity to access and deal with those in conjunction with the Faculty Senate president and the concerned academic units. Personnel issues are not always faculty governance issues, noted Roussel.

The Faculty Senate will monitor the progress made in solving current problems, and will address faculty governance issues should any arise clearly as such in the process, Roussel said.

The next meeting of the Faculty Senate will be at 3:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 23, in 107 Clinton Hall.

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